The fear of everything : stories / John McNally.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McNally, John, 1965- author.

Standardized Title:

Short stories. Selections

Language:

English

Genre:

Short stories.

Physical Description:

172 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Lafayette, LA : University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2020.

Summary:

"In these nine new short stories, John McNally's work takes a fantastical turn, where magicians show up unexpectedly at schools, retirees answer phone calls from lonely children, and sleep study assistants speak to patients about their afterlife experiences. As with McNally's two previous collections, the award-winning Troublemakers and best-selling Ghosts of Chicago, the stories in The Fear of Everything balance humor with poignancy, but McNally stakes out new territories of darkness and absurdity. These stories are of men, women, and children, often lonely, reaching out for a connection, whether it's to prospective lovers using online dating sites or to one's younger self via bygone technology. In the historical story "The Devil in the Details," a little girl's fate is cemented early on by gossip and happenstance; in "The Attorney," a sinister lawyer weaves a tale that plays loose with cause-and-effect. Richard Russo wrote of Troublemakers, "John McNally is an electrifying writer whose stories burrow under the skin. His world becomes our world, his way of seeing, ours. Resistance is futile." Twenty years later, the same is true for The Fear of Everything"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: The Magician

The Lawyer

The Fear of Everything

The Phone Call

The Creeping End

The Blueprint of Your Brain

The Next Morning

The Devil in the Details.

ISBN:

9781946160638

1946160636

OCLC:

1145229994